Ageing disgracefully - get real

Adele Horin -Apr 21, 2012

Illustration: Simon Bosch Photo: Illustration: Simon Bosch

Anyone who has not lost their mental faculties must be aware of the hype surrounding the ''new'' old age. This is the old age where 80-year-olds go hang gliding, 90-year-olds win chess tournaments and centenarians play competitive table tennis.

An industry is devoted to projecting images of ''positive ageing''; there is even a prize, awarded by a group, for journalists who toe the line. Accentuating the negative - old age poverty, elder abuse - is so yesterday.

The hype is projected mainly at baby boomers; at 50 or 60 they will do what it takes to defy getting old in the way their grandparents and maybe their parents did - with complaint and disability, illness and dementia. The boomers will defy history and age ''successfully''.

There is another part to the message about successful ageing which is a big worry. The new old age won't be for everyone. A happy, mentally and physically active old age will be a reward bestowed upon those who put the effort in, starting now. We'll get the old age we deserve.

Those who end up suffering the old old age with its indignities, frailties and mental decline will be seen as losers who didn't try hard enough.

The idea that we can control the kind of old age that lies ahead of us is seductive but probably misguided. We boomers want to age disgracefully, kicking our heels up, living life to the full. And that's all very possible in our 50s, 60s and 70s providing we have the money. We can take advantage of opportunities our parents never knew, unconstrained by conventions that held them back.

Yes, we look fabulous compared to our sun-beaten parents at the same age - or so we think - and surely that means we will stay forever young, providing we do the right things. Not for us an ending that is brutish and long.

But the 80s may be another story. Women who have reached 60 have a good chance of living another 26 years, and men another 23 years. However, how healthy the last years will be is still highly contestable, with some scientists positing that life expectancy is increasing faster than the expectancy of life in good health.

Even more contestable is how much individual effort makes a difference in the last years. Genetic inheritance is one factor that influences how long we live and how healthy we will be. So too does diet and exercise. But surely luck, good and bad, plays its part as well.

It is important to take personal responsibility for our health, and do what we can to minimise the risk factors (always easier for the rich than the poor).

Giving up smoking, drinking alcohol in moderation, cutting down on saturated fats, eating smaller portions than most of us probably do, and taking regular exercise are indisputably important to reduce the risks of all sorts of health problems.

As well, battalions of scientists pump out daily missives on how to ward off dementia. There is in fact some merit in the ''use it or lose it'' argument.

But unfortunately some of the messages become confusing. Crosswords, chess, dancing, singing … it is unclear what really works best (the evidence is strongest for exercise), and at what intensity the activities must be pursued to have a significant effect on the brain. Is being sociable enough, reading the newspaper, and going for a walk as some evidence suggests? Or do we have to try new challenges, learn Mandarin, give the brain a real workout, as other research indicates?

Whatever, the ball has been put in our court; it's up to us to take up brain training and weights training. And heaven forfend we should ever feel gloomy. Being positive, especially about ageing itself, is a prerequisite to living a long, happy life.

It makes sense on a population-wide basis to encourage people to aim for the new old age by changing their lifestyles and exercising their brain.

But the emphasis on self-help and personal responsibility creates dangers too. The first danger is that in the future those stricken with the bad old age will be blamed for their own misfortune.

When mum starts putting the kettle in the fridge and asks the same questions over and over, the temptation will be for the family to re-assess her life in the light of her illness. Perhaps silently they will castigate her for her perceived shortcomings, her failure to take up bridge, her lack of interest in current affairs. Sure, she might have liked walking but clearly she should have taken up cycling - like that razor-sharp Mrs Withers who has her own blog and teaches refugees English.

Cancer sufferers already know what it is like to feel admonished in this way. Many feel that they are responsible for having contracted their disease despite what they thought was a good-enough lifestyle. Clearly it wasn't good enough.

The second danger is that the emphasis on personal control raises impossible expectations of old age.

If illness, memory lapses, and sadness dog the last years despite the brain and the weights training, will we feel, on top of all the other ailments, a sense of failure?

Old age needs to be approached with realism. We may do our best and still be robbed of our reward.

We can hope to die on a tennis court in our 90s but more likely, like the old old today, we will end up reliant on government services and the kindness of our family and strangers.